AUGUST 6, 2021 – Yesterday we roamed the local scene just up river from Old Saybrook. Of all the scenes, shops, and people we encountered, none beat the junk store along a sleepy stretch of a lazy route.
Stacked, strewn, and leaning outside were things large and small, rusted and peeling, collected from who-knows-where-or-when. After a brief survey of these silent items pulled from the past and waiting patiently for a future, we stepped into the dilapidated shop behind.
There in a forgotten world, we entered a jungle of hanging what-nots and rows of dust-covered collections of the matched and the mismatched. Behind a counter the size of a dinner plate stood an older, bespectacled man with long, thin, grey, unkempt hair. In his weary T-shirt covered with faded images of plants and flowers, he was well-camouflaged among his wares. He greeted us softly, as if he were a librarian and we, browsers in the mystery section.
Over the years I’ve followed my wife into many establishments selling yesteryear’s stuff. Yesterday, I followed her usual pattern—edging along narrow aisles, surveying displays, reaching for a porcelain bird, turning it over, returning it to its nest until a day in the distant future when another browser lifts the flightless bird briefly from its dusty perch. Then, predictably, the thin passageway widens enough for me to scoot ahead. In the short passing lane, I squeeze from porcelain to paper—old cards, notebooks, diaries. I slam on the brakes, pick up a small, leatherbound journal and peer into the thoughts of someone long gone. Only by chance did the journal wind up in a junk shop instead of a dumpster, and not until that moment were the writer’s thoughts from April 8, 1907 allowed to stir.
I returned the journal—and the writer’s musings—to the heap disheveled by time.
By stealth the proprietor had then reached my side. “Right here,” he said, gesturing toward an area full of baskets, hand-carved animals, and painted sticks, “is our Amazon collection—and hanging there just above your head are real blow-guns.”
The quirky display prompted questions. From the answers I learned that the man had taken many trips deep into the Amazon and spent much time among native tribes. (Upon hearing this, I imagined that the missing fingers from his right hand might have been eaten by piranha.) He traveled by a series of narrowing airways, roadways, waterways, and trailways until he was swallowed whole by nature’s deepest green.
We decided to acquire two reminders of this junk jungle—though nothing of Amazonian origin. “We don’t take credit cards,” was the response when I prepared to pay. My wife asked about Venmo. “What’s that?” asked the proprietor’s wife (a story for another time). My wife explained, as if to a member of an ancient tribe. “We don’t go online,” the woman said.
The phone rang. With his good hand, the proprietor answered. Not in 50 years had we seen a dial-phone in use.
We waved good-bye and returned to 2021.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
